#sound graph

We wanted to remember our first gin and tonic. Well, to be exact, the first gin and tonic made with Spirit Works Distillery gin. It was a pretty exciting moment. So much so in fact, that I recorded the process on my phone as a sound file. I had seen a website where someone had taken famous speeches from history and depicted them as sound graphs (that’s a technical term apparently, according to our Special Services Consultant, Mike Johnson) and I was wondering if we could do the same thing with our rendition of a classic cocktail. Only question was how to do it. 

One wall of our office at the distillery would work just fine as a canvass, and the visit of our very close and talented friend, Linda, brought the project together. We took the recorded sound file and opened it in a piece of software designed to manipulate soundtracks. We were able to present the whole piece as a sound graph, which we screen grabbed as an image so we could play with it a little.

We projected it onto the available wall at our office and Linda outlined the resulting image using masking tape of various widths, ranging from 1/8 up to 3/4 of an inch, which we had sourced from a specialist paint store locally. This part of the process was incredibly time consuming even with Ashby and I lending a hand. We also used a laser level to make sure that the longer sound spikes were perfectly vertical. The outlined result was astoundingly accurate.

We then painted over the whole wall in our signature navy blue, leaving a border at the top and the bottom of the image. When it had dried sufficiently, we carefully pealed away the tape and we were left with a perfect rendition of our gin and tonic on the wall. You can clearly see the cocktail come together; the ice clinking in the glass, the gin being poured, the fizz of the tonic and even the slice of lime being cut towards the end. Makes me thirsty just looking at it. Thanks, Linda!

- Timo

  To listen to our first gin and tonic being made, click here: http://tinyurl.com/ginandtonicsoundsgood

  (Pictured above: Timo and Linda seated in front of the gin and tonic sound graph)

  (Pictured above: Linda uses a projector to tape the lines of the graph)

  (Pictured above: Bandit, Linda, and Timo use the laser level to check for proper alignment)

  (Pictured above: Linda paints the Spirit Works Distillery signature blue background)